


All Un/Happy Endings Are Alike

by BangAndBlame_Archivist



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Meta, Post-Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-14
Updated: 2003-03-14
Packaged: 2018-12-20 02:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11911617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BangAndBlame_Archivist/pseuds/BangAndBlame_Archivist
Summary: by NovaPost Gauda Prime meta





	All Un/Happy Endings Are Alike

**Author's Note:**

> Note from oracne, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Bang and Blame](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Bang_and_Blame), a Blake’s 7 archive, which has been offline for several years. To keep the works available for readers and scholars, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after June 2017. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Bang and Blame collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/BangAndBlame/profile).

'All happy [endings] are alike but an unhappy [ending] is unhappy after its own fashion.' Leo Tolstoy, more or less.

'I see now that unhappiness makes people alike but happiness doesn't, it makes them individuals.' Christa Wolf.

 

It all seemed very simple, to begin with. I watched 'Blake', I was convinced...but I couldn't bear it. So I started tracking alternative patterns of infinity, patterns that stayed faithful to my view of the series characterisation but took the characters through to happier endings. In other words, I started writing fanfic.

My second fanfic was a PGP ('Body and Soul', on the Liberated website), written as a thank-you note to the friend who'd lent me her B7 tapes, because she wanted an alternative to 'Blake'. And I'm a novelist in real life, so I automatically started writing a B7 novel (only notes and fragments so far): 'Avon, By the Window', published in Red Roses III: Dark Roses, is a spin-off from that project. But I didn't expect to write any more PGPs after that. I only write A/B slash, no other kind of B7 fanfic, and from that point of view, the best way to avoid Gauda Prime is to find scenarios that leave room for Blake to return to the Liberator after Star One, which meant that my stories were mainly set in the first and second seasons.

Then I completed my collection of A/B slash and started reading A-B gen, which contains a phenomenal amount of PGP stories. I couldn't resist the challenge of coming up with a new and relatively plausible way of permitting everyone to survive Gauda Prime--hence 'Unfinished Business', published in ttba, which is the closest I'll ever get to gen. And through reading fanfic and listening to the Serious Angst Devotees on Freedom City, I discovered that there were people who actually  _preferred_  Unhappy Endings. In an attempt to come to terms with SAD syndrome, I wrote an Unhappy Ending PGP of my own ('Before and After', Fire and Ice 7), because writing fiction is my best chance at understanding anything. Apparently, 'Before and After' passes the angst test, although I found that, once I'd worked out a back story to explain why Avon and Blake suddenly lose their customary verbal skills in the tracking gallery, the story spooled out way too easily. For me, Happy Endings seem to be much harder and, therefore, much more interesting.

By now, my attitude to Un/Happy Endings is a lot more complicated. I can understand why people write alternatives to 'Blake' that are just as (or even more) angst-ridden--Hafren's metaphor of an emotional workout in the angst gym sums it up perfectly. I also understand my own position better, after having to explain it. I don't see the B7 series arc as a tragedy in the Greek or Shakespearean sense, where the tragic hero's nature and circumstances make his or her death inevitable. 'Blake' strikes me as more like Hardy's Tess of the Durbevilles\--a classic example of 'life's little ironies', minor errors that have disproportionately terrible consequences. I wouldn't want to rewrite the ending of 'King Lear': Lear's words, while he clutches Cordelia's body, offer a catharsis that heals at the same time as it hurts. But 'Blake' was written as a cliffhanger series ending, allowing for the possibility of a fifth series and the survival of everyone but Blake, so it doesn't have the same sense of closure. Besides,the whole point of tragic irony, as compared to out-and-out tragedy, is that the disaster was avoidable, all of which makes me feel entitled to go on helping the characters to avoid it....

I should also add that I regard the A/B relationship as canonical--it's just that the BBC wasn't allowed to show us the slashiest bits. What's more, I think Avon and Blake complement each other in a way that keeps sending me back to Plato's definition of lovers as two separated and searching halves of one soul. (Yes, I know a lot of fans see their relationship as ineradicably antagonistic, but I live in Australia, where 'Jeez, you stupid bastard' counts as an endearment, which may colour my perceptions.) So, as far as my take on the patterns of infinity is concerned, the chances of Avon and Blake making their way to a relatively Happy Ending are considerably higher than their chances of stuffing up.

Nonetheless, I still find 'Blake' convincing. I still think it's great that the BBC's programming decision means there's one TV series which gives a one-finger salute to last minute rescues--after all, in everyday life, minor errors can indeed have disproportionately terrible consequences. And I've been thinking about Avon's politics lately, wondering how they might change in a hypothetical fifth season....

As Belatrix says, 'There's something irresistible about the PGP.'


End file.
